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March 14, 2008

Part of the No Impact project is to have a positive impact to offset the unavoidable negative impact of, well, being alive, and part of that has been to the work of environmental organizations. As a result of that, Wednesday night was a mega-proud night for me because I got invited to be a member of the board one of the coolest organizations going--Transportation Alternatives (TA).

(Before I waste a minute more, by the way, if you love this blog and have been enjoying it and feel like showing some appreciation, you could do so by giving a little financial support to TA. You can become a member or make a special donation here, where I'd be grateful if you also left behind a comment saying No Impact Man sent you.)

What is so cool about TA is that it's emphasis is not on helping the planet so much as helping the people. In particular, TA helps New Yorkers to have more "livable streets." That means more trees, more public space, more trees, more bikes and fewer cars. It turns out, you see, that by emphasizing improving living conditions for the people, TA automatically helps the environment.

The idea is that the huge amount of public space that criss-crosses our City and is currently devoted to cars should be devoted to hanging out and having fun. By dedicating the streets to human rather than automotive activities, the people get happier and so does the planet. Fewer cars, happier people, happier planet.

Amazing how what's better for us is also better for our habitat, right? That's why I've written before about opportunities in the environmental crisis.
Getting cars out of New York City and other communities that ought to
put people before cars would not only cut down on greenhouse gases and
improve air quality but would offer us the opportunity to have much
nicer places to live.

Imagine the city as one big park! Don't believe me? Look at the
pictures of New York's Park Avenue below. Which do you like? New York
with cars or New York without? (You may have seen these pictures on the blog before, but I feel like celebrating my new TA board position by showing them again).

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

February 14, 2008

If 16 million New Yorkers moved to the countryside to escape from city life, the devastation would be terrible. But what if the way to improve life is not to move the people to the countryside but, in a way, to move the countryside to the city? That is part of the idea behind the happy city and livable streets movement.

Making cities excellent for living in, by the way, is a crucial step forward if we are to maintain the planetary habitat that people depend on for their health, happiness and security. Indeed, "smart growth" and compact living are central pillars in the energy policies of manyenvironmentalorganizations.

To make such policies successful, though, requires not only vision and imagination, but better yet, reliance on an increasing body of real-life experience. As to that experience, Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, sent me an excellent article by Charles Mongomery, published in Air Canada's in-flight magazine enRoute (of all places). The following are quotes from the article:

"Changing the way we design and use public space can change the way we
move, the way we treat other people and ultimately the way we feel."

"In recent years, [Paris] residents have become so sick of noise, pollution
and congestion that they have thrown their support behind a radical
plan by Mayor Bertrand Delanoë to reclaim their streets. By 2012,
suburban cars will be banned entirely from the city’s core."

About the new Paris bike-sharing program: "Making the road seem more dangerous by injecting thousands of bikes
into traffic may actually be making it safer. Bike accident statistics
have flatlined, even as the number of cyclists has jumped in Paris by
nearly 50 percent in the last six years."

"Encounters we have on foot or by bike [as opposed to in cars] tend to build trust. It’s in the
eye contact we make as we choreograph our movements. When it works, we
become just a little less fearful of each other...So the more we meet outside
of our cars, the kinder and gentler we’re likely to become."

"As a bonus...happy folks are more likely to volunteer, to vote and to return lost
wallets to strangers."

"Bogotá [Columbia] was mired in poverty, chaos, violence and crippling traffic
when [Mayor] Enrique Peñalosa decided to redesign it using lessons from
happiness theory nearly a decade ago...Peñalosa declared war on cars...He pushed cars off prime road space in order to make room
for an efficient rapid bus system so that the city would feel more fair."

“What are our needs for happiness?” Peñalosa said in explaining his
policies. “We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be
around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And,
most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of
equality.”

"The number of road fatalities fell by a third. Traffic began moving faster as people switched to the mayor’s rapid bus system."

"The shift in priorities had a psychological effect on the city. Polls
found that optimism shot up. The murder rate fell by 40 percent. By the
end of Peñalosa’s term, residents had voted to ban private cars from
rush hour by 2015."

"The more time we spend on foot, on bikes or even on public transit,
the more we slow down and the more we fuel this kind of social alchemy.
Ironically, it may be the crisis of climate change – and the push for
carbon austerity – that reinvigorates street life around the world."

The thing is, I know how much we all love our cars. The thought of not having them horrifies us. But is that because driving around alone in steel boxes is so great, or is it because not having a car in a society so completely structured around the automobile is so difficult?

What if we envisage a better society that did not depend on cars? What if our towns and cities were structured in such a way that the expense of having a car just plain wasn't worth the hassle? What if we designed our cities in such a way that you didn't need to drive to the countryside but could just hang out on street with lots of neighbors, lots of trees and no exhaust fumes?

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

February 13, 2008

Apropos of today's earlier post about the problems with cars, two easy steps you can take, if you're interested, to help reduce car traffic and air pollution in New York City, and in making the City more livable.

First, if you're a New York State resident, click here to send a fax to State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in support of Congestion Pricing, a measure that will both reduce automobile traffic and fund public transportation (read more here).

Just a thought on how we can all make a difference when it comes to getting away from cars! Thanks!

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

The thing is, we're looking for the better automobile, but couldn't we do much better for ourselves by finding ways not to have to spend so much time in them in the first place?

Here's a list of thoughts. Some of them are my own. Some of them are sparked by WorldChanging's Alex Steffan's recent post "My other car is a Bright Green City" (but references you'll find to the beauty and intelligence of my wife are my thoughts alone).

Societal obsession with inventing a high-efficiency vehicle obscures the fact that using our land to live in suburbs instead of compact villages and cities deprives ourselves not only a sustainable but a much more satisfying solution.

Cars cause about 20% of our greenhouse gas emissions.

The more we drive the fatter we are, the fatter we are, the more heart disease we have, the more heart disease we have the quicker we die.

If everyone in the United States deserves a car, then everyone in the world deserves a car. If everyone in the world gets a car, we're toast.

As our population grows, traffic will only get worse.

Studies show that building more roads only causes more traffic.

Where, in major cities like, say, New York, are you supposed to fit more roads anyway?

We need to help developing countries create better alternatives.

As Alex writes: "The single best way we can do that is to lead by example. By embracing
our own models of sustainably prosperous living, we would do two
things: we'd help change the cultural messaging about what prosperity
really means, and we'd create some (perhaps many) of technologies and
designs other countries will need to invent their own models."

Commuting by car, in traffic jams, breathing in the fumes, getting mad, and honking horns, like cars themselves, sucks.

3.5 million Americans now spend the equivalent of a month a year in their cars, according to Alex.

Not being able to walk to our neighbor's house, not being able to ride a bike to the store, not being able to let your kids play on the street--all these things are alienating. They make us lonelier and sadder.

According to Alex, "procurement of the materials used to make and maintain that car (and
then dispose of it at the end of its life) may mean that almost half of
the direct climate impact of a car never comes out of its tailpipe."

So even if you come up with a car, based on the same materials, that gets infinity miles per gallon, you'll only have cut your footprint by half.

Imagine if the huge amount of public space sandwiched between the buildings in cities, often known as streets, was dedicated to people instead of to cars.

Imagine if 90% of Manhattan's air pollution did not come from automobiles and if the 95% of the island's residents who don't even own cars didn't have to breathe it.

Imagine if we didn't have to pay $29 billion a year to clean up the water polluted by cars.

According to Alex, "the greenhouse gasses emitted while building and maintaining roads add
an additional 45% to the average car's annual climate footprint."

Alex, quoting the Baltimore Sun, points out: "The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects total miles
driven to increase by 59 percent by 2030, which the report's authors
say would cancel out whatever reductions in carbon dioxide might be
achieved by improving the gas mileage of cars and trucks."

Meanwhile, people who live in the newer fringe-burbs are reportedly the least happiest of Americans, and the long commutes they endure are the major reason why, writes Alex, quoting an article in BusinessWeek Magazine.

By the way, the BusinessWeek article he quotes, "Extreme Commuting," is by my wife, Michelle Conlin, the smart one in our partnership. Wicked cool!

A commuter who travels one hour, one way, would have to make 40%
more than his current salary to be as fully satisfied with his life as
a noncommuter, writes my beautiful wife.

According to Smart Growth America, if 60 percent of new developments were even modestly more compact, we'd
emit 85 million fewer metric tons of tailpipe CO2 each year by 2030 --
as much as would be saved by raising the national mileage standards to
32 mpg.

Alex points out, "the amount of density the study's authors call for is extremely
modest. They encourage building new projects at a density of 13 homes
per acre, raising the average national density from 7.6 units per acre
to 9 an acre."

In other words, instead of figuring out how to replace the United States's 226 million cars (2003 figure) with high-efficiency models, how about if we eliminate the need to drive them everywhere we go?

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

February 08, 2008

Car A gets a fuel efficiency of 46 miles per gallon. Car B gets about
50 miles per gallon. Car A is called the Toyota Prius and is hailed by
environmentalists as a step towards solving global warming. Car B, a
new car called the Tata Nano unveiled by an Indian company, is reviled
by environmentalists as disastrous for global warming. The New York
Times devotes an entire editorial condemning the Tata Nano. Columnist
and author Tom Friedman calls for the Tata Nano to be "taxed like
crazy." The reason for this extreme criticism? The Tata Nano is cheap -
very cheap. It is a revolutionary new car design that will cost only
about $2,500 and will bring car ownership within reach of millions of
new people in the developing world.

Now, I don't dig Shome's post in its entirety, but I will say this: the No Impact, tighten-your-belt approach clearly doesn't apply in the developing world. That is to say, I won't be going to India or Kenya and bragging about reducing my impact.

Here in the United States, where we waste resources to the point of making ourselves unhappy and unhealthy (remember my quality of life vs resource use curve), focusing on impact reduction through reduced consumption may well be part of the equation. That doesn't follow where consumption hasn't even begun and people are still living on that part of the quality of life curve where increased resource use will make them happier (again, see the curve).

That's why the investment in the development of new and the implementation of existing renewable energy and technology is so important. Because I sure ain't going to be the one to tell the Indians they shouldn't have cheap cars. Besides, think of the jobs we would have created for the American economy if we innovated a car like the Tata Nano that did even better on emissions or maybe didn't even run on gas at all? There's no reason we shouldn't have.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not turning my back on the importance to American happiness, health and security of wasting fewer of the planetary resources we depend on--reducing consumption. And I'm also not a fan of the automobile. But in this case, the problem is not Indian entrance into consumerdom, but the United States's non-entrance into sustainable development.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

January 17, 2008

Can't say much. Getting home past midnight after a trip back from Indianapolis by train. The picture above shows the inside of an Amtrak roomette (courtesy of Tinotopia). The picture below shows what it looks like when the beds are folded out. Twenty-two hour ride. Lots of work done. Which would your rather do? Ride or fly?

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

January 11, 2008

So people get pretty upset, in turns out, when you suggest that to live environmentally might mean fewer air trips to the Bahamas. "What's the point of saving the world if I can't see it?" someone commented yesterday. Oh boy. That roused some other people.

I get both sides of the argument, so it's hard for me to make forever rules for myself about this. It's been put this way: that if any of us expends more carbon than the planet could sustain for everyone, then we are taking more than our fair share. That's a hard one to swallow, since the planet couldn't actually sustain everyone flying more than about once every ten years or so.

But thinking it through, if I'm interested in travel and I want to be enviro, there is this option: fly to Europe and then travel south overland and east and west, too, and basically zig zag around and work my way to China and and India and into the Himalayas and stay away for a couple of years until I'm done. Then fly home. In other words, get my whole life's travel done with only one flight (see No Impact readers Phillipe and Heather's thoughts on this too).

Won't work, you say? Have to get to the office? Right. Me, too. And the reason is that we are all part of larger systems and those larger systems sometimes forces us into the false screw-the-planet-I-want-to-be-abundant versus I-care-so-I'll-deal-with-ascetism dichotomy. In other words, the choices, as defined by the systems, are bogus.

Why does it have to be a choice between the supermarket and local food? Why is it a choice between staying at home like a hermit or driving the car? Where are the damn trains? Why also are we faced with having to work so hard just so that we can buy the same disposable products over and over again?

The systems are poorly designed. Well, not so much designed as hodgepodged together. So what I want to say here is that, as important as my individual choices are, I also need to get active in changing the system. I need to be a big mouth.

I (meaning we, but you know how I hate to preach) need, as Susan Och says, to call for an expanded rail network, for example. I need to call for durable goods. I need, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus say, to campaign for huge federal investment in renewable energy.

As well as our individual choices, we need to fix the systems. All of this takes more than a phone call to our representatives. So the question is, how do we do it?

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

January 10, 2008

Yesterday, you may have read, I posted about how No Impact Man lives once the rules of the No Impact Man project cease to exist. I called myself low impact man in that post, but I'm sticking with my original moniker. The ironies are just too precious.

Anyway, one thing I brought up is the fact that, in my life to come, my highest impact activity--air travel--will not be nixed from my life. Reduced substantially, I hope. Eighty-sixed, no.

So I thought it would be worthwhile to post some facts related to air travel, its impact, and its possible alternatives:

Airplane-generated greenhouse gases, because they are injected directly into the upper atmosphere, are nearly three times as potent as the same gases produced on the ground.

Air travel is now responsible for three percent of greenhouse gas emissions, but the number of air miles flown worldwide is set to triple by 2030.

Meanwhile, 40-50% improved efficiency in aircraft is expected over the next 30 years.

But put another way, air miles will increase by 5 to 6% a year, while efficiency will only improve by 1 to 2% a year.

Some people believe that global travel to experience other cultures and firsthand experience of global beauty and eco-catastrophe is an important cultural motivator for positive change (it certainly has been for me).

In a study in the UK, 40% of young people said they would be willing to stick with local food but only 4% were willing to fly less.

On the other hand, 40 to 50% of air travel is for business purposes, and business travel is an increasingly stressful experience that people don't like and are motivated to eliminate.

Business travel is hugely cost-inefficient, often wasting as much as a day per person in travel for meetings lasting only an hour and half.

George Monbiot, author of Heat, suggests that we expend only "love miles," traveling by air only to see important friends and family. We should look for alternatives to luxury and business travel (thanks for leaving that in comments, Sharon). [Apparently, I got this wrong. Monbiot, Sharon comments, actually says we must also dramatically limit our love miles.]

Hi-Definition, virtual meeting video-conferencing is getting increasingly sophisticated but is still hugely expensive at $200,000 to 450,000 (the image above shows the Cisco system).

On the other hand, large companies who adopt it find that the costs are offset quickly by reduced travel expenses.

And there are inexpensive, lesser vide0-conferencing alternatives like Apple's iChat, Skype, or, for more sophisticated business applications, WebEx.

Meanwhile, all of us should, of course, offset our air travel (my favorite place to do that is Native Energy), but offsets take last place in the carbon management hierarchy.

Much better to reduce, and the fact of the matter is, what it comes to flying, we must.

PS I would love to hear about case studies of businesses substantially reducing air travel. Send 'em in!

PPS Those of you who wrote asking about my Indianapolis talk, I asked the organization who invited me but they have no extra seats. So sorry.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

November 29, 2007

Tomorrow I leave with my daughter Isabella and the cameraman of the documentary about the No Impact project on a 200-mile trip to my hometown of Westport, MA, a trip I haven't made for nearly a year because of the project. But now that the rule-based phase of the project is formally over, even my fairly stringent environmental conscience accepts that I occasionally have to visit my family, impact or no.

The bad news is that the dog sitter canceled at the last minute, which means I have to bring Frankie with me which means I can't take the train. That means that I'm going to drive. But there is a little bit of good news and to the actual point of this post: a method we can all use to reduce our reliance on cars.

Carsharing is an automobile rental service intended to substitute for private vehicle ownership. Carsharing emphasizes affordability and convenience. Vehicles are rented by hour, located near residences, and require minimal effort to check in and out. Carsharing services are common in some European countries and are increasing in North America. Carsharing gives consumers a practical alternative to owning a personal vehicle that is driven less than about 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometres) per year. Carsharing has lower fixed costs and higher variable costs than private vehicle ownership. This price structure makes occasional use of a vehicle affordable, even to low-income households. It also gives drivers an incentive to minimize their vehicle use and rely on other travel options as much as possible. Carsharing typically reduces average vehicle use by 40-60% among drivers who rely on it, making it an important transportation demand management strategy. [Emphasis is mine]

Car sharing is an environmentally friendlier alternative to car ownership because 10 to 20 households end up sharing the use of each vehicle, the per use costs of the vehicle is a deterrent to casual use (as opposed to actually owning the car), the comparatively lower costs of public transportation and walking and biking make them more attractive than car use. In fact, a study of a car sharing service in Portland, OR concluded that:

26% of members sold their personal vehicle after joining the organization.

53% of members avoided a vehicle purchase as a result of their membership.

Members increased transit ridership, bicycle use and walking.

In other words, the idea of car sharing is that it allows people to get rid of their cars but still have occasional access to them, with the overall effect of lower reliance on automobiles. Plus, in my case, using Zipcar, I get to drive a Toyota Prius which gets 45 miles per gallon, making use of a car for my trip, since three people (and a dog) are traveling, about as efficient as the train.

Click here to find car sharing services near you (and don't forget to get rid of your car).

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

November 28, 2007

Thanks to Clarence Ekerson of StreetFilms for emailing me Open Planning Project Executive Director Mark Gorton's interview with New York Times ethicist Randy Cohen. It's about the ethics of transportation in New York City in particular and in big cities in general. During the interview, Cohen says (slightly paraphrased):

Ethics is about the effects of our actions on others and, especially when you live so close together in a city, it's easy for one person's actions to have profound effects on others.

One thing that undermines ordinary happiness and health and economic life of New Yorkers is the private car.

We're becoming a nation of fatties in part because most Americans, when they want a quart of milk, can't walk but have to take the car to get it.

If you leave decisions [about the ethics of transportation] to individual moral choice there is no solution possible to the problems caused by automobiles. People will continue buying SUVs even though they harm others more than other cars.

But we as a culture, as a country and as a society are capable of making wise policy choices.

What's wrong with driving around the city to do errands is simply everything. The word we ethicists use for that kind of behavior is "selfish."

It's particularly vile and morally indefensible in New York City, where there is excellent public transit. There absolutely no need for private cars in Manhattan.

The greatest crime of the automobile in New York City may be that it undermines ordinary happiness in ways we've ceased to notice. That's truly sad.

Watch the interview below or click here to come to the blog and watch it.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.